From The Markup
Is There a Tech Cold War with China?
By Julia Angwin
There is a narrative in Washington, D.C., that we are in the midst of a tech cold war with China. The story line, further propagated by tech company CEO’s in arguing against regulation, has fostered much policy: The former Trump administration, with its America First agenda, limited Chinese access to American technology and attempted to curtail the influence of Chinese tech firms in the States. And in many ways, the Biden administration has followed suit with policies that emphasize the threat of Chinese technological advancement and bankroll domestic innovation in fields like artificial intelligence...
To understand the potency and consequences of the cold war narrative, and its relation to China’s domestic tech crackdown, I interviewed Shazeda Ahmed, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Information and a visiting scholar at the AI Now Institute, whose work focuses on China’s tech industry and internet policy...
Angwin: I wanted to start with a big picture question—right now there’s a narrative in D.C. that there’s a tech cold war with China. Do you agree with that story line?
Ahmed: I disagree, but I do see how the actions of the U.S. government, Chinese government, and certainly some tech companies on both sides can be seen as creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of a tech cold war. I disagree with this as a framing of what we’re going through right now, and I think that it’s never too late to back away from this narrative...
Shazeda Ahmed is a Ph.D. student at the School of Information.
